Details:
I haven't used my IBM Thinkpad 600E for a couple years. For the last
3 months I've been searching for the power cord, which should have
been on the floor right next to the computer. Impatient, I took the
drive out of the computer, verrry easy to do, and connected it via a
Rosewill RCW618 SATA/IDE adapter cable, and the directory structure
was there, and some files, and I could copy them, but many files
seemed not to be there, or couldn't be read. I tried .jpg files
especially because it's easy to tell if they "work". Some appeared
quickly, others seemed not to appear at all, and one showed up after
minutes I think, after first only the top quarter of the picture
showed, and I had gone to an entirely different program for ten
minutes, and came back to find the picture fully displayed.

But eventually the "F: drive" dropped off the list of drives in
Windows Explorer!! I could unplug it and plug it back in, but this
time it came and went faster.

Sounds like a lot of retries needed to read.

So I tried other hardware, a 2 1/2 inch enclosure that I'd never used
before. Again I could see the directory structure, and lists of files
with their lengths, etc. but many were missing.

So even now the drive works a little but chkdsk says it's a RAW drive.

Chkdsk, like many other MS "tools" is of atrocously bad
quality. Ignore whatever it sais, it is misleading.

Any suggestions as to how to get my data off.

Thanks a lot.

FTR, I already copied 3 years ago all the .jpg files to another
computer which is backed up. All I really would like is the email t
that I sent and got on a trip I took, since I plan to got there again,
and really only a couple addresses, which I can eventually replace,
but maybe there are things I've forgotten.

Ordinarily, I would suggest professional data recovery from a
reputable (!) outfit. (Lots of fraudulent and incompetent
ones out there...).

In this case, locate the specific files, and try to copy them
a dozend times or so. If that does not work, then professional
data recovery is the only chance and it is a slim or really
expensive (>> 1000 EUR/USD) one.

But quite frankly, your chances are slim. Better prepare to
deal with not getting this data and think about what to do
differently next time.

Re: Amateur HD disassembly and data recovery?... I am curious if I should offer to make an amateur attempt at data recovery for her? ... I have no idea if anyone was really successful, but in the days of 40meg drives, not only were things a lot less critical because the data wasn't so dense, but thc computer kept track of the bad sectors. ... And the notion of swapping platters, that too perhaps might have worked long enough to retrieve data of a "bad drive", though I don't recall hearing about any "amateur" being successful. ... Or, the contrarians bring it up, but nobody reports back success....(alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)

Re: Lane Kiffen is a Fucking Idiot...INCREDIBLY poor chance of being recovered. ... Your chances of getting both touchdown and the field goals... the risk of turning the ball over on downs,... Pretend you have two drives that end in 4th downs (and ...(rec.sport.football.college)

Re: Todays Freecycle... Why does Max keep on finding reasons why it might be impossible to do ...on-the-fly data recovery which already 'soaks up' most of the ... Since anyone wishing to give such pre-owned/used drives another lease ... toughest test available which is the "Low Level Format" function. ...(uk.tech.digital-tv)